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Twenty Worshippers Killed In Gun Attack On Mosque In Sudan
by Mohamed Ali Saeed
KHARTOUM (AFP) - Twenty Muslim worshippers were shot dead and around 40 others wounded when a gunman sprayed bullets on a packed mosque near here Friday night, Sudanese police said.
A police spokesman said a member of the Takfir wal-Hijra group opened fire with a Kalashnikov automatic rifle on the worshippers at the mosque of the pacifist Ansar al-Sunna sect in a village outside Khartoum.
The gunman was then fatally wounded in a shootout with police who rushed to the blood-soaked scene, according to the spokesman's report of preliminary findings read on state television.
Police chief Hujo al-Kanzi earlier said on Sudanese television that the assailant had been arrested, while witnesses said there were several armed attackers, disputing the official version of a lone gunmen.
"There was blood all over the place. People were terrified," one of the worshippers recounted.
He said the attack took place during prayers around 9:00 pm (1800 GMT), which were well attended because of the current holy month of Ramadan when Muslims are required to fast from dawn to dusk.
Another witness, Ahmed Mohammed Ali, told Sudanese television with tears in his eyes that bullets rained down from three sides before a five-minute lull after which he heard heavier gunfire.
A Sudanese government soldier, Idris Omar, nursing a wounded hand that was bandaged, said that a group of armed men wearing traditional robes, or jalabiyas, were responsible for the attack.
The police spokesman named the assailant as Abbas Abbas, who had been living in the village with his brother, who identified him to police.
The bodies of the dead were shown lying covered with bloodstains in pictures broadcast on state television.
Police and ambulance sirens wailed as the wounded were rushed to hospitals, while security forces remained deployed in the village of Jarafa on the outskirts of Omdurman, a suburb of Khartoum, where the attack took place.
Takfir wal-Hijra (Atonement and Self-Denial) believes the Islamic law that governs Sudan should be implemented by force, while the pacifist Ansar al-Sunna does not.
Other Islamist forces have targeted the Ansar al-Sunna before.
Around 20 people were killed when three gunmen led by an assailant of Libyan origin, who had fought in Afghanistan, attacked another mosque of the Ansar al-Sunna sect in Omdurman in 1994.
Police killed one of the two Sudanese assailants while the other, and the Libyan, Mohammed Abdullah al-Khilaifi, were executed in 1995.
The Ansar al-Sunna sect is not connected to any political group in Sudan, but has links with the orthodox Sunni Muslim Wahhabi sect that has forged a ruling alliance with the Saud royal family in Saudi Arabia.
Takfir wal-Hijra also has a branch in Egypt, where it has carried out attacks amid waves of anti-government violence in the 1990s.
Friday's attack took place just three days before general elections in Sudan, which are being boycotted by numerous opposition groups, but observers said there was no connection between the attack and the vote for president and parliament.
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